ALL PAPERS IN THIS SITE ARE THE
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF THEIR AUTHORS, AND ALL AUTHORS
RETAIN FULL COPYRIGHTS TO THEIR PAPERS.

Please Read
these important notes to students!!

Feel free to read and
explore any of these works, but be
certain that you follow MLA guidelines
for citation of electronic sources. The papers are intended as
additions to the scholarly community, not as freebies
that you can plagiarize at will. Remember, most Universities
have a strict policy on plagiarism-- you could receive
an "F" for any course wherein you are suspected of
plagiarism, and you could face even more severe penalties. Since
these papers are written by professional scholars, your teacher
will probably be able to tell if you "borrow" from
them without giving credit for ideas, even if they are paraphrased
(reworded).
Also, be sure to consider
many sources, including those that you can find in your University's
library. This Webpage is not, nor is it intended to be, a final
and authoritative critique. This is a small collection of voices
in a very large discourse about these authors. Much of what is
here is well evidenced opinion-- use it to research and form
your own opinions.

Consider the information
on this website as "official" as what you get in a
print book. You would not copy from a text book, you should not
copy from this site, either. You can use the information here--
you just have to give credit where credit is due!

Citation of Websites: "How do I do it?"

If you quote fewer than 200
words from any source you are within the rules of "fair
use" and do not have to ask permission of the work's author/editor
to cite them in a scholarly paper. But you do still have to cite
the source in a works cited page, and the rules for electronic
citation vary. Note: in most guidelines on citation, you might
be asked to provide a "sponsoring organization" or
"hosting institution." This site has neither. The host
is the Editor, Kim Wells. You must customize the bibliographic
entry to fit what you do have. But, in general, the basic MLA
format for citation of an electronic source is:

This is for a Works
Cited Page:

Name of site owner, author or editor. Title
of Web Site, Date of latest posting, if available. Online.
Internet. Name of organization
sponsoring Web site. Access or printout date <URL>.

If any of the "required" pieces
is not available, you should skip it and put what is available;
for a site with no title, description of site (such as "Home
page"). If a website does not have an author , source of
publication (like a University) or editor's name listed, however,
you should consider whether or not the site is really reliable,
and perhaps make a trip to your library for some more reputable
sources.

For example, if you are citing the Domestic
Goddesses site in general, the citation should look like this:

If you are citing a particular
paper on the website, your citation should look like this:

Strickland, Margaret. "'Like a Wild
Creature in its Cage, Paced That Handsome Woman': the
Struggle Between Sentiment
and Sensation in the Writings of Louisa May Alcott."
Domestic Goddesses. Editor,
Kim Wells. August 23, 1999. Online. Internet. Fill in date you
access/print
out site. <http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/strickland.htm>.

If you're citing a secondary page within
the website that it not also authored by someone other than the
website editor (as in the above example) you should make the
citation like this:

This is for the
Body Of Your Paper-- you need both the reference in your paper
AND the Works Cited Page

When you refer to an idea in a paper,
even if it is not a direct quotation, you should reference the
person from whom you got the idea. For example, if I were quoting
the paper by Li Di-Lu on Chopin's The Awakening, this
is how I would (and how you should according to MLA guidelines)
do it:

Critical theory varies on how to read Edna's suicide. For
example, one can even read it from a Buddhist standpoint as Edna's
attempts to find herself (Lu, The Awakenend One, np).

This is how to parenthetically refer
to an idea that one gets from an author. Now, if I were directly
quoting the idea from Lu's paper, this is how to do it.

Critical theory varies on how to read Edna's suicide. For
example, one can even read it from a Buddhist standpoint. Li
Di-Lu states:

If read as a suicide, then Edna Pontellier's last swim is
a consequence of her awakening to the limitations of her femaleness
in a male-dominant society. But on a metaphysical level, especially
from the Buddhist perspective, The Awakening's final scene
can be seen as Edna's ultimate gesture in trying to grasp the
essence of her being. (The Awakenend One, np)

I cannot, as a writer and teacher, stress
the fact that you MUST CITE AND PROPERLY GIVE CREDIT FOR THESE
IDEAS AND PAPERS. I know of at least one teacher who has flunked
several students, with my full support, for cheating by using
ideas from one of these papers and not giving credit.